“I don’t have any of this. Thank you so much! This is awesome.” He beamed, looking pleased with himself. “You’re welcome. I look forward to hearing you play.”
Butterflies flipped in my gut. Oh, yeah, playing in front of Henry.
I remembered that that would be happening during the coming weekend. I’d been so cool and colected when Ted asked me whether I’d be nervous performing in front of Henry, but now that I was in his presence, now that I was so close to the perfection of his face, the depths of his eyes, the soft pink of his lips…suddenly, I was more than a little freaked out that he’d be in the audience.
“Sooo…,” I said, thumbing the stack of sheet music.
“Gemma, I’m so sorry,” he said softly, “about the thing in the car.” He reached over and rested his wrist on the stack of sheet music. He brushed the top of my hand with his index finger, tracing my veins. I trembled under his touch.
“Don’t apologize. Please… I’m glad you told me. I should be the one saying sorry. It wasn’t cool that I didn’t give you a chance to explain. That voice in my head, the way it floated in, then her face in the mirror. It wigged me out. I didn’t think—I just reacted,” I said, twisting a few strands of hair around my fingers.
“You saw her, in the mirror?”
“Yeah.”
“So, do you see these people al the time then?”
“No. Not al the time. I most just try to ignore them.” I paused.
“Henry, you mentioned that Lucian sees them, too?”
“Yes.”
“Can he see your mom?”
“Probably, but she stays far away from him. Up here mostly.” He pointed to his head. “I had no right, Gemma. I was out of line, and the fact that I scared you,” he swalowed hard but continued, his voice almost a whisper, “that’s the last thing I wanted to do. I don’t want to do anything that might chase you away.” Instead of a singular finger, he wrapped the whole of his hand around my wrist.
The warmth started immediately, seeping through my forearm and climbing toward my shoulder. His hand was big and dwarfed the bones of my arm.
“I’m not going anywhere, Henry, although by the sounds of it, Lucian would be thriled if you chased me away.” I looked at his face, the bruise around his eye already healing. The difference was remarkable, the injury less prominent than it had been only hours ago. It stil looked painful, though, and my gut sank when I thought of the reason behind how it came to be.
“If Lucian knew that I shared any of this with you…” He looked down at the table, his face grave. “To say he’d be pissed would be like caling a hurricane a puff of wind.”
“This afternoon…something else happened,” I said. His face was serious.
I told him about my run, the vision in the clearing, the creepy cloaked man. By the time I’d finished, Henry looked pale, uncomfortable. The sensation transferring from his skin to mine chiled as my story continued. In contrast, I felt at ease. Henry’s mere presence seemed to exude a calming influence, as if everything would be al right simply because we were breathing the same pocket of air.
“There’s more. I saw a man, a new shade, in the mess tent after I came back in. Irina, she’s a psychic, and she asked me if I could see him.”
“Can she see the shades?”
“No, but she can hear them. And this one whispered to her, in Italian.”
“What did he say?” He was holding his breath.
“Libro magia. Ci’ondolo.”
“Libro magia is magic book. And ci’ondolo…” Henry was quiet for a minute, brow furrowed, face down. Then he looked up at me. “Pendant. Maybe charm or necklace…”
“You speak Italian?”
“Sort of.” He smiled, his eyes sad. “Alicia speaks Italian.” Alicia, who lives in his head. Creepy. I touched the side of his arm.
“He’s talking about the AVRA-K, isn’t he…? Libro magia?” Henry nodded.
“But what about ci’ondolo? What was he talking about?”
“I think it’s about the avrakedavra charms. They were made at the time of the book’s creation, meant as healing tokens. I’ve never seen one, but I know they exist. Somewhere in the world,” he said.
“Why would he want me to know about that? And isn’t abracadabra something magicians say to their top hats?”
“It is now, when it’s pronounced like that, but in the old, old days, it was used in healing practices. It’s been sort of bastardized over time.”
I chuckled at him. “How do you know so much about this?” A smal smile slid across his lips. “How do you think I know?” Oh. Right.
“You’d kick ass on Jeopardy.” He laughed at me. How I loved his smile.
I could trust Henry. What we were sharing was volatile, damming stuff—information that could undo a lot of lives in a very short span of time. And although I wasn’t accustomed to talking so openly about the shades and their presence in my life, I suppose if it ever came to blows, it would be my brand of crazy against his.
But his mode of weird came with an added perk—his touch.
“Henry, that hand thing you do…yesterday when I reached up to touch your face, it felt like I was being electrocuted. I even bit through my lip.” Henry looked down. “It was so different than the warmth.”
“The touch is based on my emotions. When I’m happy or content and in control, it’s warm. When I’m angry or scared, it can be very painful to the person on the receiving end.” Just as Ted described, the way it had been with Alicia.
“Can you control it al the time? Like, how do you shake hands with people without them figuring it out?”
“I can hold it back for a few seconds, usualy long enough to get a handshake out of the way. Unless I’m nervous or something…
then I wear gloves.”
I remembered that he had worn gloves that night when he and his father had come for dinner. He’d been nervous, to come here?
“It’s like holding my breath. I can keep the warmth back, but never the dark energy. That has a mind of its own,” he said. “I was annoyed with Poole for making me look like a douche, and of course, at Lucian, for this,” he pointed to his face. “I was tired and pissed, and you just happened to be the one I took it out on. I’m so, so sorry for that, Gemma.”
“When you just touched me, it started out warm. But when I told you about what happened this afternoon, it cooled a little,” I said.
“And now?”
I smiled. “It’s warm again.”
“You make me feel safe,” he said, his eyes soft. “I’m sorry I hurt you.”
Henry released my wrist and splayed his arms across the table surface, elbows bent and palms up. Though I desperately wanted to, I didn’t touch him, but as he spoke, he looked at his hands, his brow wrinkled, as if to curse each and every finger for having caused me pain that moment in the hal at school.
“Don’t apologize. I sort of deserved it for being such an idiot and gasping. It made everyone turn and look at you,” I said.
He puled his arms in and folded his hands into one another, his fingers crisscrossed.
“Does this touch thing work on everyone? I mean, does anyone else know you can do this, or have you ever touched someone and had them say, ‘Hey, that was odd’?” I couldn’t help but wonder what it would feel like if he touched more than just my hand or my face, what it would feel like if our bodies were…closer. Without the barrier of fabric between our skin.
“Wel,” he smiled, “I know it affects different people in different ways. It sort of depends on the person I’m touching. It has little if any impact on my father, but I had a nanny once who used to complain that I hurt her when I threw temper tantrums.” I laughed, imagining a young Henry stamping his feet because he had to leave the park or couldn’t have another cookie. “No one else knows about it.”
“Yeah, about that… Ted knows. When I told them about your black eye, it sort of came up. He said that you inherited the gift from your mom.”
Henry laughed qu
ietly under his breath. He wouldn’t have known his mother’s touch if she died when he was a baby. How painful for him to hear such an intimate detail about his own mother from a stranger.
“When I was a little kid, Lucian told me that I was very strong for my age, so I couldn’t touch anyone else without hurting them.
Gave me a superhero complex for a while. I started to think that maybe I was like Superman, that I could crush rocks with my bare hands.”
“And could you?” I smiled. As far as superheroes went, I was partial to Wolverine, but Superman…I could go with that.
“No, but not for lack of trying. I nearly broke my hand a couple of times squeezing the life out of a few unfortunate river rocks.” I chuckled at the vision of a young boy clamping down on a rock until he was blue in the face. “But it taught me a very important lesson,” he continued, serious again. “I learned that I could make a stone turn white hot, or glacier cold, just by holding it in my hand and thinking certain thoughts.”
“So you are kinda like a superhero.” I raised an eyebrow and gave him a playful smirk.
“Far from it. Lucian used to tel me that each person has a gift. I just figured that was mine.”
A gift. Al this time I’d been running from mine, afraid if I embraced it, I’d be locked up with my mother. Hearing about Henry’s acceptance of his own talents made me feel, somehow, less crazy.
“Things are going to get worse for us before they get better, aren’t they?” I searched his eyes for a flash of reassurance, wishing he’d tel me that this was al just some outlandish practical joke. But there was no flash. Just the consolatory stare that people gave you when they delivered bad news. He didn’t answer me verbaly. He didn’t need to.
The quiet was interrupted by a knock on the trailer door.
“Come in,” I said. Marlene entered. She looked tired and a little unnerved.
“Hi, Henry.”
“Helo, Mrs. Cinzio.” He greeted her with his award-winning smile.
“I just came in to see if you two kids were hungry. Early dinner is about up, if you want me to bring you anything,” she said. Henry looked to me to answer first, and now that she mentioned it, I was feeling a little holow.
“Food sounds good. Henry, you can stay for dinner, right?” I said.
“That’d be cool.”
“Wel, what does a strapping young man such as yourself fancy to eat?” Marlene relaxed, her tone flirtatious. She liked Henry.
“Whatever Gemma’s having would be perfect, Mrs. Cinzio, thank you,” he said.
“I think it’s linguine tonight,” she said. “And cut that out. I’m Marlene. Mrs. Cinzio is Ted’s mom, and she’s older than dirt.”
“Thanks, Marlene.”
Marlene returned in a flash, food in hand, and disappeared just as quickly, though not before tucking my bouquet into a vase. She gave us a wiggle of her fingers as she stepped out of the trailer, leaving Henry and I alone once again. I liked being alone with him.
He smeled so good, and despite everything, al the bizarre stuff going on, he made my stomach flutter, in that good way. I loved that even though he was considerably taler than I was, he leaned into me when I talked, as if every word I spoke was the most important thing he’d ever heard. I loved how he scanned my face, alternating between my eyes and my lips, as if waiting for the perfect moment to bend over and kiss me.
The food was tasty, and it was charming to have our own private dinner party away from the chaos of the meal tent, away from Ash’s angry glares and Junie’s incessant chattering. Marlene must’ve told Ted that Henry was here, but he didn’t come knocking. Maybe Ted was waiting for Henry to make the first move.
As we ate, Henry asked me about music, I asked him about growing up in Eaglefern. We took turns feeding one another bites of pasta, laughing as he slurped a noodle and as I smeared Alfredo sauce across my chin. We stopped short of a Lady and the Tramp reenactment, but the thought of sharing a single strand of linguine until our lips met in the middle, yeah, it crossed my mind.
We were dancing around the scary, complicated stuff, but when we ran out of unimportant subjects, I summoned the courage to ask about his mom.
“So…can I ask…how does that thing work, with your mom?
Does she whisper to you or what?”
Henry wiped his face on his napkin and sat back against the bench. “No, it’s not like that. Most of the time, I just get images.
She can talk to me, but doesn’t always. I don’t know—it’s sort of hard to explain. We can carry on conversations. I learned to speak French listening to her in my head. She used to sing me to sleep when I was realy little, always in French. Scared the hel out of Lucian when I was learning to talk, and everything coming out was French instead of English or Romanian.”
“You speak Romanian, too?”
“Some. Only out of necessity.”
“What was that like, having a constant companion with you when you were young?”
“Normal. Like home. I always felt safe knowing that my mother was near. She warned me when Lucian was in a rage or when he was going off about something. I spent a lot of time with nannies, too, so it’s not like Lucian and I did a lot of father-son bonding. I did that bonding stuff with my mom.”
“Even though she wasn’t realy there,” I said.
“Yup.”
“That sucks. At least I had Delia there sometimes, for better and for worse.”
“Yeah, but by the sounds of it, you never knew what you were going to be faced with, whether Delia would be herself or if she’d be in LaLa Land.”
“True…,” I said. Delia spent a lot of time in LaLa Land. Too much. “I remember when I first started seeing the shades. I was terrified and thought for sure that there was something wrong with me. I didn’t want anyone to find out because I didn’t want them to send me to the hospital with Delia.” I looked away. The pity in Henry’s eyes was making my throat tight. “Did you ever wonder if you were crazy?”
“What, because I can talk to my dead mother and she can answer back? Or maybe because I can electrocute people when they piss me off?” he laughed. “Nah. It was just normal to me.
Alicia has always been there, and I’ve learned how to deal with the touch thing. But who knows? Maybe I am crazy. But you heard her, too, so that makes you a candidate for crazy, as wel.”
“Yeah, like I didn’t know that about myself.” I baled up my own napkin and tossed it into the sink. “Do you see her? Like, standing in a bright light or sitting on grass or…?” I was thinking about how I had seen her in the field this afternoon.
“It’s like this—you know when you’re about to do something you know you shouldn’t do, and a little voice pops into your head that tels you no? It’s kind of like that. Only with pictures. And stuff in French,” he said. He raised his eyebrows, his face questioning whether I believed him.
“Is she with you al the time?” It gave me pause to think of his mother watching us, watching me, through her son’s eyes. “Because I see her sometimes, floating nearby…”
“I can close it off, if that’s what you mean. She’s not a spy, Gemma. She stays away as appropriate. It’s more like having an amplified conscience.” Of course, he couldn’t see her. But I could.
She felt like a spy to me.
“Like Jiminy Cricket?”
“Yeah, like Jiminy Cricket. Only with a crystal bal,” he said.
“So, when you’re hanging out with friends or whatever, can she always see what you’re up to?” What I realy wanted to know was if we were to kiss or something, someday, maybe, would Alicia be involved? Because that would be…weird.
A sly smile crept across his face. “No. It doesn’t work like that.” I sensed by the drop in his voice that he caught on to what I was saying. “I can shut her out when I need to. She knows when to stay away.”
I felt my face reddening and looked at the clock on the stereo panel. After 7 p.m. Already?
“So, you probably have home
work to get to, huh?” he said, shifting on the bench. “I should’ve brought mine.”
“No, I’m light tonight. Not a lot to do, or at least not a lot that I want to do. I have a photo assignment, but it’s a little dark for that now,” I said. I studied his face, examining the area above his eye.
“You’re a fast healer. Your eye looks so much better than it did yesterday.” Even the blood in the white of his eye had pretty much disappeared. He reached for my hand and pressed it to his cheekbone.
“See? Al better,” he said.
A pleasant silence settled between us, our fingers intertwined against his clean-shaven face. The tingle of anticipation surged through me as Henry puled me around to his side of the table. I scooted toward him, and he moved his hand to my cheek to brush a few wayward curls around the side of my face.
“May I?” he asked, his voice quiet and sweet. I nodded, nervous but ecstatic as his face drew closer.
“Can she…is Alicia watching?” I whispered.
“No. She’s gone,” he said, closing the last few inches between us.
His lips met mine, soft, warm, ful. As he kissed me, yet another flush of energy radiated from him through my entire body. I didn’t know if it was the product of his sharing emotions through touch, or if it was my own body’s primal reaction to our first kiss. Didn’t matter. I loved it, every precious second, and I let myself get swept away in the euphoric sensation of his lips on mine.
At first, our kiss was gentle and thoughtful but gained momentum as we figured out one another’s rhythm. The cadence of our breathing intensified, and he was gentle as he nibbled my lip, teased me with his tongue. He tasted like heaven. His hands cupped my head; his fingers traced the outline of my cheekbone. Henry’s face next to mine—everything about it felt so right, so much different than any kiss with Ash. Ash’s few kisses had been hard, almost angry. But Henry was responsive, his lips reacting in equal parts passion and control, not at al demanding and yet not lacking in desire. It was…electric.
When we parted, he rested his forehead against mine, and we smiled at our first romantic encounter. I hugged him tight, kissing his neck and burying my face in his shoulder. I inhaled, absorbing as much of his scent as I could. It was one of those moments that should be alowed to last forever.
Sleight: Book One of the AVRA-K Page 13